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• Congress Reconsidered

Since its first edition, Congress Reconsidered was designed to make available the best contemporary work from leading congressional scholars in a form that is both challenging and accessible to undergraduates. For almost four decades, Dodd and Oppenheimer have delivered on this goal. With their tenth edition, this tradition continues, but with the benefit of contributing authors now able to focus on how various aspects of Congress have changed over time. Gary Jacobson not only analyzes congressional elections in the present day, but looks at changes that have occurred in elections since the 1970s. James Thurber places today's struggles over the budget in the context of budget politics since the passage of the Budget and Impoundment Control Act. John Aldrich, Brittany Perry, and David Rohde trace the evolution of the House's most influential committees, while Kathryn Pearson examines the growth (in number and influence) of women members of Congress.

Simply put, this volume remains on the cutting edge with key insights into the workings of Congress. The New World of U.S. Dodd holds the Manning J.

Congressional Politics. Congress Reconsidered, 8th edition. Julian Zelizer. ***Dodd and Oppenheimer, “Congress and the Emerging Order,” CR VII. Since its first edition, Congress Reconsidered was designed to make available the best contemporary work from. Congress Reconsidered, 10th Edition / Edition 10. Lawrence Dodd and Bruce Oppenheimer have delivered on this. Congress Reconsidered, 8th Edition, 2004 Table of Contents Prologue: Perspectives on the 2004 Congressional Elections, Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. PART I: PATTERNS AND DYNAMICS OF CONGRESSIONAL CHANGE 1. The New World of U.S. Senators, Barbara Sinclair 2. The House Leadership in an Era of Partisan Warfare. In Dodd LC, Oppenheimer BI, editors, Congress Reconsidered. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

Dauer Eminent Scholar Chair in Political Science at the University of Florida. His books include Coalitions in Parliamentary Government (1976), Congress and the Administrative State (coauthored with Richard Schott, 1979), The Dynamics of American Politics (coedited with Cal Jillson, 1994), Learning Democracy (coauthored with Leslie E. Anderson, 2005), and Thinking About Congress (2012). His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Polity, Journal of Democracy, and elsewhere.

Dodd has served as a congressional fellow, Hoover national fellow, and Woodrow Wilson Center fellow; president of the Southern and Southwestern Political Science Associations; and chair of the APSA's Legislative Studies Section. Oppenheimer is professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He has been a Brookings fellow in Governmental Studies (1970-1971) and an APSA congressional fellow (1974-1975). He is author of Oil and the Congressional Process: The Limits of Symbolic Politics (1974).

His book Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation (1999), cowritten with Frances Lee, was awarded the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation's D. Hardeman Prize for the best book on Congress. He is also the editor of U.S. Senate Exceptionalism (2002) and the author of numerous articles. His recent research focuses on Congress and energy policy and on variation in competition in open-seat House primaries.

Week One: Introduction (Jan 8) PART ONE: STUDYING THE POST-WAR CONGRESS-AN OVERVIEW Week Two: Historical Perspectives on Congress (Jan 15) Week Three: Theoretical Perspectives on Congress (Jan 22) Week Four: The House vs. Huntington, “Congressional Responses to the Twentieth Century,” in Truman, Congress and America’s Future.Dodd and Schott, Congress and the Administrative State, 1979, Chs. 1-5, reserve.Dodd, “Congress, the Constitution, and the Crisis of Legitimation,” in CRII, 1981.Zelizer, On Capitol Hill: All Weekly Email Questions: Please answer both of the following questions: 1. How Is the Post-War Congress different from and similar to Congress in earlier historical eras and how might you explain these similarities and differences based on what you currently know about congressional politics? About a page to a page and a half, single-spaced 2. What area/topics of congressional politics would you consider for conducting a research project in this class this semester? Why, and what kind of project?

Half page to a page single-spaced Highly Recommended: Eric Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism: Looking Ahead: Works we will read next week include Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection and Polsby, How Congress Evolves Week Three: Selected Theoretical/Analytical Perspectives on Congress I. Landmark Works in the Study of Congress: An Overview.Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action, Chapters 1 and 2.Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism.Dodd, “ReEnvisioning Congress,” the version in the 7th or 8th Edition of CR.Baumgartner and Jones, Policy Dynamics, Chapter 1. Jones, Baumgartner and True, “Policy Punctuations: U.S.

Budget Authority, 947-95.” JOP: (1999) 60, 1-30. Also see Jones/Baumgartner, The Politics of Attention Email Assignments: 1. What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of Mayhew’s argument in The Electoral Connection and how would you improve on it and or expand on it?Kim, Matthew 2.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of moving beyond a re-election focus and considering other member goals in the explanation of congressional behavior? Michael B. 3. Why do Cox and McCubbins believe political parties are the central organizational unit in Congress and how persuasive is there argument? Does it seem to work for Congress under all conditions across time, or is it a time-bound, context-bound or policy-bound perspective?Paulina, Josh 4.

What does Shepsle mean by institutional equilibrium and equilibrium institutions and how might this aid the study of Congress and other branches of government such as the Court?Donald 5. What is Polsby’s ‘social structure’ argument in How Congress Evolves, how does it differ from goal-oriented and organizational perspectives, and what do you see as its contribution to our understanding of congressional change in the postwar era?Chris, Jayme, 6. What is the social structure argument in Polarized America, how do the authors propose to test it, and how might it help us understand congressional change in the postwar era?Rob 7.

What are Raced-Gendered Institutions and how is this concept and the study of it relevant to Congress, with what theoretical and research implications?Adann 8. What is the argument of Arnold in The Logic of Congressional Action, with respect to legislator-constituent relations and their affect on congressional action, and how persuasive/useful is it?Kevin 9. How might scholars think about policy reversals by Congress from the perspective of Arnold versus Baumgartner and Jones and what implications would your answer have for your expected dissertation work?Jordan 10. What is the value of multiple theoretical perspectives on Congress, as seen in Dodd’s ReEnvisioning Congress,” and what are its drawbacks and limits? What perspective does it provide on congressional change in the postwar era and how might that perspective be improved on? Jackie Week Four: The House versus the Senate I. And Commentary” in Oppenheimer, U.

Senate Exceptionalism. Email Assignments: 1. What are the basic contrasts between the House and Senate identified by Baker and why are they important?Kim 2. Why and how do Carmines and Dodd (publishing in 1985) see bicameralism changing across history, particularly since WWII, and how does the research of Alford and Hibbing (published in 2002) speak to their analysis?Chris 3. What is Sinclair’s argument in Transformation and how do “New World” “And 60-Vote” extend and inform her earlier argument?Rob 4. What is Lee and Oppenheimer’s core argument in Sizing Up and what is its relevance to our understanding of Congress?Michael 5. What are Rohde’s core arguments in Parties and Leaders about why the House moved from the textbook Congress to Conditional Party government and how persuasive do you find his argument?Adann 6.

What were the norms of the House and Senate like in the early post-War era, as seen in the work of Matthews and Asher, and also Huitt on the ‘Outsider,’ and how likely are the changes of the past two decades to have altered and upended those norms? How might one gauge what the contemporary norms are and what their causes and consequences are?Paulina 7.

What role did power versus ideology play in the reforms of the House versus the Senate in the 1970s?Donald 8. Based on the reading thus far in this course, including Zelizer, Sinclair, and Dodd and Oppenheimer, how would you compare and contrast the way in which the Republican Revolution swept the House versus the Senate, and with what Similar/different consequences?Josh, Jordan 9.

What are the major research areas that Rohde stresses in “Seeing.Together”, how might they best be framed, and what kinds of specific research endeavors might flow from them?Jackie 10. What is Dodd’s argument in “Making Sense” about why and how the House and Senate may be analytically different kinds of institutions, requiring different theoretical lenses to see and comprehend them?Kevin Some Thought Questions: (1)Detail three or four major differences between the House and the Senate as institutions and discuss their combined implication for the development of Congress. (2)Briefly compare and explain the distinctive responses of the House and Senate to the post-WWII world and discuss the implications these developments have for the operation of Congress as a powerful policy-making institution today. (3)If we were to see the House as composed of ‘goal-seeking’ legis-lators (responding in their goals to the structured hierarchy of power within the House) legislators and the Senate as composed of ‘goal-adapting’ legislators (responding in their goals to the fluctuating opportunities afforded them by service in the fluid Senate) how might such a perspective generate systematically different arguments, hypotheses and research designs for the House and Senate, and how might such designs yield cross-chamber comparative research?

Week Five: Constituencies, Representation and Elections I. General Perspectives.Jacobson, The Politics of Congressional Elections: all.Jacobson, “Parties and PACs in Congressional Elections,” in CR IV and “The.Stewart, Analyzing Congress, Chapters 4, 5, 6 II. Constituency Characteristics and Elections a. The Marginality puzzle is interesting both substantively, in terms of what it says about Congress and elections, and analytically as an example of the development of a research program in political science.Everyone should read/review the original article by Mayhew in Polity Vol 6 (1974), #3, which is reprinted in Parker, Studies.

Everyone should also read/review Part I of Fiorina, Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment, 1989. Recommended: To appreciate the development of the work on marginality, now or in preparation for prelims, read as follows: Part I in Parker, Studies, including the introductory comments by Parker and the articles by Mayhew, Bullock/ Scicchitano, Ferejohn and Fiorina. Then review Fiorina, Congress: Keystone of The Washington Establishment, 1989, Part I (assigned in the Scope and Epistemologies course; this is a reprint of his 1977 book). Then read Cover and Mayhew, “Congressional Dynamics and the Decline of Competitive Congressional Elections,” in CRII. Then read Cain, et.al., The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence, 1987, Chapters 7-9 (remainder recommended). Then read Fiorina, Congress: Keystone., 1989, Part Finally, read.

Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests Jacobson, The Electoral Origins of Divided Government Fowler and McClure, Political Ambition Sorauf, Inside Campaign Finance Jacobson and Kernell, Strategies and Choice in Congressional Elections Week Five Email Assignments. All Students: Briefly: Based on your reading of Jacobson, Stewart and other readings in Part I, what aspects of congressional campaigns and elections most interest you, why, and with what significance or implications for Congress as an institution and also for congressional research? About one page.

Individual Assignments: 1. What is Mayhew’s marginality puzzle, how did Fiorina propose solving the puzzle, and how convincing is Fiorina’s argument today?Michael 2. What is the ‘partisan’ advantage identified by Alford and Brady, how does it apply historically, how/why was it challenged by the personal advantage in post-war America, and how might it apply/not apply today?Rob 3.

How did Dodd incorporate the casework thesis and partisan concerns in “The Cycles of Legislative Change” and how might the cyclical argument apply or not apply today?Kim 4. What was Oppenheimer’s argument in “Deep Red and Deep Blue,” what was his evidence, how convincing does it appear today, and what appear to be the strengths and weaknesses of the argument in retrospect?Jordan 5. How do McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal link issues of demographics and congressional elections to explain the polarization of party politics today, and how convincing to you find their argument?Josh 6. What are the characteristics of a member’s Home Style, how does home style affect a members relations with his district and thereby his or her reelection chances, and what are the implications of home style for representation of districts?Chris 7.

How does Fenno characterize the nature of home style among African American legislators and how does it affect their participation in and role in Congress? How convincing do you find his analysis?Adann 8. What is the argument of Miller and Stokes with respect to constituency influence in Congress, how convincing is it, and how applicable would it be today?Jackie 9. What role does David Brady see critical elections as playing in inducing policy change in Congress, how convincing is his argument, and in what ways would it seem applicable/not applicable today?Kevin 10. What is Tracy Sulkin’s theory of ‘issue uptake,’ what role does it play in elections and agenda setting, and what is its significance for our understanding the responsiveness of Congress as a representative institution?Paulina; Donald Week Six: Parties and Committees I. The Post-War Evolution of Parties and Committees.Dodd and Schott, Congress and the Administrative State, Chapters 3-5 Review or Finish.Zelizer, On Capitol Hill – Review or Finish.Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the PostReform Congress, Review or Finish.Stewart, Analyzing Congress, Chapters 7, 8.James MacG. Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy.Dodd, “The Expanding Roles of the House Democratic Whip System,” Capitol Studies, 1979.Dodd, “Coalition-Building by Party Leaders: A Case Study of House Democrats,” Congress and the Presidency, Vol 10: #2, 1983.

Party Government in Congress.Cox and McCubbins, The Legislative Leviathan, all.Dodd and Oppenheimer, “Congress and the Emerging Order,” CR VII.Krehbiel, “Where’s the Party?” British Journal of Political Science 23 (1993), 234-60.Smith and Gamm, “The Dynamics of Party Government in Congress;” “The House Leadership in an Era of Partisan Warfare,” by Schickler and Kathryn Pearson; and “Obstruction and Leadership in the U.S. Senate,” by Evans and Lipinski; all in CR VIII. Congressional Committees.Deering and Smith, Committees in Congress, all.Aldrich and Rohde, “Congressional Committees in a Partisan Era,” in CR VIII.Fenno, “The House Appropriations Committee as a Political System: The Problem of Integration,” APSR (1962) 56: 310-24.Gordon, “The (Dis)Integration of the House Appropriations Committee: Revisiting The Power of the Pursue in a Partisan Era.” In CR VIII. Committees versus Parties: Who has Influence?.Maltzman, Competing Principals: Committees, Parties and the Organization of Congress: all.Raven, “Institutional Development in the House of Representatives, 1890-2000” Email Assignments: 1. Based on the readings thus far in this course (including those in Part I of the syllabus, the Deering and Smith book in Part III, and readings in previous weeks), lay out a timeline (with associated triggering events) by which Congress transitioned from the Committee Government era of the early postwar period to the Conditional Party Government of the current periodJosh 2.

As seen in the two essays on the whip system by Dodd, how was party leadership in policy-making and vote-gathering changing in the 1970s?Kim 2. What is the core argument (about parties as cartels in Congress) in Legislative Leviathan and what are its implications for how we would understand Congress were it true? What are its strengths and weaknesses?Paulina 3. What is the argument of Dodd and Schott in “Congress and the Emerging Order” with respect to cooperative partisanship, what are the implications of this argument for parties’ electoral, organizational, policy-making and governing strategies, and how might such implications be explored in empirical research?Jordon 4. How do the authors in Congress Reconsidered (Smith and Gamm, Schickler and Pearson, Evans and Lipiski) describe party leadership in the House and Senate today, as distinct from earlier period?Adann 5.

What was Fenno’s argument in his 1962 APSR article and how well or badly does his argument now apply to the Appropriations Committee, based on Gordon’s analysis? What are the implications of Gordon’s analysis for the committee and Congress?Chris 6. How and why do Smith and Deering see committees operating differently in the PostReform period from earlier decades? Jackie; Michael 7. Outline the three models of committee performance discussed by Maltzman, explain how and why the models vary across time in their relevance to Congress, and discuss the model most appropriate to the postreform Congress.Kevin;Donald 8. How does Raven explain congressional development across the 20th/21st century and what is the relevance of his argument to our understanding of Congress today?Rob Week Seven: Goals, Careers, Groups and Institutional Politics I. General Perspectives and Classic Theoretical Statements.Rieselbach, Congressional Politics, pp.

64-73.David Price, The Congressional Experience: all, at bookstore.Fenno, Congressmen in Committees, Introduction and Chapter One; on reserve.David Rohde, “Risk-Bearing and Progressive Ambition: The Case of Members of.Glenn Parker, Institutional Change, Discretion, and the Making of Modern Congress Email Assignments for Week Seven: 1. Based on the readings from this and prior weeks, imagine you were going to do a research paper on the changing nature of the congressional career from 1945 to the present. In what ways and why would you expect careers to be the same in the past decade or so as they were in the early postwar decades, in what ways and why would you expect careers to be different, what would be the overall significance of the resulting patterns of congressional careers, and how would you test for these arguments?Chris; Jackie; Kevin 2. In what organizational, normative and behavioral ways has the coming of (some degree of) racial, ethnic and gender diversity altered the House of Representatives, how might such alterations continue into the future, and how could you test your arguments?Rob, Paulina, Adann 3. What is the argument presented by Dodd and Schraufnagel with respect to the changing role of norms in the Congress, how does their argument inform our understanding of committee vs party government in Congress, why do they see changing norms affecting policy productivity, and what critique would you offer of their argument?Josh; Donald 4. In what ways does Dodd’s argument about “A Theory of Congressional Cycles” in the Wright, et.

Volume differ from his argument about “Cycles of Legislative Change” in the Weisberg volume, what are the implications of his argument for how one explains policy change in Congress, and what critique would you make of his argument?Kim; Jordan; Michael Week Eight: The Contemporary Legislative Process I. General Overview.Rieselbach, Congressional Politics, Chapters 5 and 6.Walter Oleszek, Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process.Steven S. Smith, Call to Order: all.Binder, “The Partisan Basis of Procedural Choice: Allocating Parliamentary Rights in the House, 1789-1991,” APSR 90 (1996): 8-20.

Congress Reconsidered

Congress Reconsidered: Fifth Edition: Chapters 9 and 13; Fourth edition: Chapters 10 and 13 Third Edition: Chapters 14 and 17; Second Edition, Chapter 12; First Edition: Chapter 5. IV.

Operating within a separation of powers system.Mathew Shugart and John Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics, Chapters 1 and 7; all is recommended.Jon Bond and Richard Fleisher, The President in the Legislative Arena.Dodd and Schott, Congress and the Administrative State, Chapters 4-8; see also Joel Aberbach, Keeping a Watchful Eye (On Congress and the bureaucracy).Robert Scigliano, T he Supreme Court and the Presidency (which presents an argument of an inherent alliance of these two institutions against Congress).The Encyclopedia of the U. Congress, pages 1185-1204, on Congress and the Federal Judiciary.Mayhew, Divided We Govern.Bessette, The Mild Voice of Reason, Chapters 4- 8 3. Case studies. Polsby, Political Innovation in America Special Email Assignment: Early Research Thought Paper: Write a short 1 to 2 page thought paper on the topic you expect to develop as your research paper for this class. Lay out the puzzle you are thinking about analyzing, why you’ve chosen it, how you might go about the theorizing and research, and what you hope to find.Rieselbach, Congressional Politics, Chapters 7,8.Julius Turner, Party and Constitutency: Pressures on Congress, revised edition by Edward V. Schneier, Jr., Preface, Acknowledgements, Chapters 1,2,8 and Epilogue; look at the remainder if time and interest. On reserve.Aage Clausen, How Congressmen Decide:.John Kingdon, “Models of Legislative Voting,” Journal of Politics, 1977.Cooper and Young, “Partisanship, Bipartisanship, and Crosspartisanship in Congress Since the New Deal,” in CR VI.Brady/Volden, Revolving Gridlock: all.

Eventually read also Krehbiel, Pivotal Politics,.McCarty, Pool and Rosenthal, Polarized America, Chapters 6,7.Diana Owens, Greasing the Wheels.Sarah Binder, Stalemate Email Assignments: 1. What is the theory of institutional gridlock developed by Brady and Volden and how does this theory explain public policy developments in the contemporary Congress?Chris; Jackie; Rob 2. How do McCarty et. See party polarization affecting public policy in contemporary America and what are the implications of their analysis for how substantial change in our current policy outcomes can be best generated?Michael; Paulina 3. What is pork barrel politics, how does Evans see it affecting the enactment of general-interest policies, and in what ways is it similar/dissimilar in the House and Senate?Kim;Donald 4.

According to Binder in Stalemate, when does stalemate exist in congressional policy-making, why does it exist, and how convincing do you find her analysis?Kevin; Adann 5. In Stalemate, Binder seeks to explain why some Congresses pass a higher proportion of ‘salient’ legislation than do other Congresses.

One thing she does not look at is whether successful efforts to enact salient legislation look different from unsuccessful efforts. That is, she fails to consider whether the character of the support coalitions and leadership efforts in successful cases differs in identifiable ways from the character of such efforts in unsuccessful cases – even within the same Congress.

Possibly the causes of stalemate have less to do with general factors like divided government, etc., than with variation in the success of leaders/policy entreprenuers in generating certain types of policy coalitions. How might you go about examining this issue, starting with Binder’s data and analysis?JordanConsider the same question, but in terms of whether the success of legislation has to do with the character of policy opposition.Josh Weeks Ten to Fifteen: Research on Congress During these five weeks each student will conduct a personal research project on an aspect of Congress that interests him or her. Additionally, during this period we will meet each week except for week ten to discuss your research designs and research progress, to meet with other faculty on their research, and to discuss your research findings at the end of the semester.